Year: 2019

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Pope Francis in Romania: Imitate Mary’s joy in the visitation

May 31, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Bucharest, Romania, May 31, 2019 / 11:18 am (CNA).- Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Bucharest for the feast of the Visitation Friday, encouraging Catholics in Romania to imitate Mary’s humble joy in the little things in life.

“Mary journeys, encounters, and rejoices because she carries something greater than herself: she is the bearer of a blessing. Like her, may we too be unafraid to bear the blessing that Romania needs,” Pope Francis said May 31 in Bucharest’s St. Joseph Cathedral.

“This is the secret of every Christian: God is in our midst as a powerful saviour. Our certainty of this enables us, like Mary, to sing and exult with joy,” he said.

Pope Francis said that contemplating Mary can help one realize the quiet sacrifices, devotion, and self-denial made by so many mothers and grandmothers who are unafraid to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and shoulder difficulties for the sake of their children and families.

“As a good mother, Mary knows that love grows daily amid the little things of life,” he said. “A mother’s love and ingenuity was able to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love.”

“Mary, lowly and humble, starts from God’s greatness and despite her problems – which were not few – she is filled with joy, for she entrusts herself to the Lord in all things. She reminds us that God can always work wonders if we open our hearts to him and to our brothers and sisters,” he explained.

The feast of the Visitation celebrates the Virgin Mary’s journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who recognizes the unborn Messiah in Mary’s womb.

“Mary journeys from Nazareth to the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth. It is the first of Mary’s journeys, as related by the Scriptures. The first of many,” Pope Francis said in his homily.

“She will journey from Galilee to Bethlehem, where Jesus will be born; she will go down to Egypt to save her Child from Herod; she will go up again every year to Jerusalem for the Passover, and ultimately she will follow Jesus to Calvary,” he said.

Pope Francis explained that these journeys all have one thing in common: “they were never easy; they always required courage and patience.”

“They tell us that Our Lady knows what it means to walk uphill … She knows what it is to be weary of walking and she can take us by the hand amid our difficulties, in the most perilous twists and turns in our life’s journey,” he said.

The Holy Spirit “urges us as Christians to experience the miraculous motherhood of the Church, as she seeks out, protects and gathers her children,” Pope Francis said.

“Let us think of the great witnesses of these lands: simple persons who trusted in God in the midst of persecution. They did not put their hope in the world, but in the Lord, and thus they persevered,” he urged.

The Mass concluded the first day of Pope Francis’ May 31- June 2 apostolic visit to Romania. On Saturday Pope Francis will travel to northeastern Romania to visit the Cathedral of Our Lady Queen of Iași, ahead of the beatification of seven martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Transylvania on Sunday.

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In war-torn South Sudan, two Spanish priests build a shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary

May 31, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Juba, South Sudan, May 31, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Ave Maria, the parish church outside Mupoi, South Sudan, fell into disrepair decades ago. It was abandoned at the beginning of Sudan’s civil war, and then ransacked. It is dilapidated and practically unusable.

But two strong-willed Spanish missionaries in South Sudan are working to change that. They have a vision for the church, which they hope to turn in a continental Marian Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.

The church, near Mupoi, in the South Sudanese diocese of Tombura-Yambio, is massive. It was built almost a century ago by Combonian missionaries from Italy.

The missionaries are followers of St. Daniel Comboni, the first Bishop of Sudan, who founded their order in the late 19th century. The Combonians became the leading evangelizing force of Sudan, and were especially successful in converting to Catholicism the tribes in the territory that today comprises the new nation of South Sudan.

Sudan became an independent nation in 1956. Its first prime minister, Ismail al-Azhari, in order to appease the Islamists of the country’s north, expelled all Catholic missionaries from the country. The majority of those missionaries were Italian Combonians.

Their churches, rectories and missions were either abandoned or transferred to young native clergy and religious. Ave Maria was one such Church. But after the missionaries were expelled, and the civil war began, most of the region’s Catholic population fled. The Church building was left to crumble.

But Catholics are returning to the area. And two Catalonian priests, themselves missionaries to the region, are determined to turn the massive Catholic church into the continental Marian Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.

“Now that the people has returned to this area, our goal is to rebuild physically, but most importantly spiritually, with a comprehensive vision” says Fr. Avelino Bassols, pastor of the mission parish.

Bassols and his vicar, Fr. Albert Salvans, belong to the Missionary Community of St. Paul de the Apostle (MCSPA) made up of men and women, priests and lay people, who have decided to leave everything behind  in order to follow Christ as missionaries in the most demanding areas of the globe.

The MCSPA was founded by the Spanish missionary priest Francisco Andreo García, who died of cancer in 2013 at Nariokotome Mission, in Turkana, Kenya.

Garcia moved to Kenya in 1988. After that, each time he visited Spain, he strengthened his relationships with the young people from the parishes where he had served during his years in Spain. This group later became the seed of the MCSPA, which now includes members not only from Spain but also from Kenya, Ethiopia, Germany, Malaysia, Italy, Mexico and Colombia.

Ave Maria Parish is now the epicenter of the peace and rebuilding effort in the northern part of war-ravaged South Sudan’s Diocese of Tombura-Yambio.

“Our mission here is to bring the Gospel in full, and that means not only spreading the Gospel, but also bringing education, peace and reconciliation to the region,” the Bishop of Tombura-Yambio, Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala, told CNA.

While the priests work in the slow rebuilding of the shrine, a building for a secondary school has been started with financial help from the U.S. based Sudan Relief Fund. The Catholic school will cater to all the students from the nearby towns of Yubu, Ngpotoneyo, Nboko and Sabamile.

“Many African Catholics come in pilgrimage to the shrine of the Holy Cross in nearby Mupoi,” explains Fr. Bassols, “Bishop Eduardo has proposed to connect both shrines, thus, people can come to pray to Our Lord in Mupoi and to Our Lady here.”

Fr. Bassols does not hide his enthusiasm when he explains: “We are located at the very heart of Africa. If you draw a cross from North to South and from East to West in an African map., Ave Maria is almost at the exact center.”

“In the state of Tombura, 84% of the population is Catholic, and I mean, truly Catholic. We need schools, drinking water, a healthcare facility, issues we are addressing with the help of the Sudan Relief Fund. But what we have in abundance here is a deep faith. Our people have survived persecutions, the expulsion of the missionaries, many decades without priests… but their deep faith remains,” Fr. Bassols told CNA.

“Is wonderful to devote one’s life to the people that need, the most and to preach them the Gospel. Catholics, especially the young, should remember that our baptismal call to be missionaries is not only fulfilled by being evangelizers to  our neighbors, but also to respond to Jesus’ call to ‘go to all the nations’ and therefore, become missionaries Ad Gentes… we invite young people to seriously consider becoming missionaries here,” Fr. Salvans added.

Bassols and Salvans are hopeful that in 2023, the centenary of the foundation of Ave Maria, the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary will be completely restored, and will attract Catholics from all over the world.

 

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The Dispatch

Biden, Bernardin, and today

May 30, 2019 George Weigel 14

Given the seriousness with which the post-Watergate Washington Post takes itself, it seems unlikely that its editors strive for hilarity in devising headlines. Whatever their intention, though, they managed the not-inconsiderable feat of making me […]

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FEMM fertility app CEO says women have the right to understand their bodies

May 30, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Denver, Colo., May 30, 2019 / 06:30 pm (CNA).- The maker of a popular fertility awareness app says it is built on peer-reviewed research and a scientific approach to women’s health, after a recent report criticized the app’s developers and funders  as “anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners.”

A May 30 report in the Guardian said the FEMM app “sows doubt about birth control” and “features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the U.S.”

The app, sold by the FEMM Foundation, markets itself as a period and ovulation tracker with three options for users – to achieve pregnancy, avoid pregnancy, or track their health.

Anna Halpine, CEO of the FEMM foundation, told CNA that “FEMM is a science and evidence based program for women’s health, and our app allows us to provide personalized health care information to women directly.”

“We think that this knowledge is basic women’s health literacy, and we think every women has the right to know how her body works, in order to make an informed choice about how she wants to manage her fertility,” Halpine added.

The app primarily serves as a tracker for various markers of fertility and health for women, with options to track periods, cervical mucus, medications, hormone levels, basal body temperature, and a host of physical and emotional symptoms.

The app has been downloaded more than 400,000 times in the past 4 years, according to the Guardian. It has 4.8 out of 5 stars in more than 1,000 reviews in the Apple store. The FEMM Foundation also offers classes on ovulation and fertility charting, as well as “medical management” training in “protocols for the management of ovarian dysfunction, menopause and infertility.”

The Guardian’s report said that FEMM appears to be biased against hormonal birth control.

“The FEMM app’s literature sows doubt about the safety and efficacy of hormonal birth control, asserting that it may be deleterious to a woman’s health and that a safer, ‘natural’ way for women to avoid pregnancy is to learn their cycles,” The Guardian reported.

Halpine told CNA that FEMM aims to help women understand their own bodies.

“FEMM sees reproductive endocrinology (hormones) as the unifying element in women’s health. Our approach is to empower women to understand their hormones and fluctuations, and to use our, or other charting systems, to monitor their own personal hormone patterns. The critical element is their pattern; based on the observations that they make of changing biomarkers in their body (temperature, or cervical fluid or dryness) women can ‘see’ their own changes of estrogen and progesterone cycle to cycle.”

“Ovulation is the sign that these hormones, plus many others, are at the right level at the right time. This is why we say that ovulation is a sign of health,” Halpine said.

Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, told The Guardian that: “The birth control pill is one of the greatest health achievements of the 20th century” and is “standard” in women’s health care.

The Guardian did not, however, mention risks of artificial contraception identified by scientific research.

According to a study posted on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “hormonal contraceptives and hormone replacement therapies are classified as carcinogenic to humans (group 1) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, the use of oral contraceptives is associated with increased risk for breast cancer, endometrial cancer and cervical cancer, while it is also associated with a decreased risk for cervical cancer.

The Guardian also reported an outdated claim on the efficacy of fertility-awareness based methods (FBAMs) of birth control, also called Natural Family Planning methods, which FEMM facilitates. The Guardian reported that the efficacy rate of FBAMs is about 75%.

In fact there are a variety of FBAMs available, each with varying levels of efficacy, depending on the method and the real-life use. For example, the Marquette Method, an FBAM, has been reported to be 89% effective with typical use, compared with an 87% efficacy rate for real-life use of condoms as a birth control method.  

The Guardian reported that implants and IUDs are among the most effective of birth control methods. However, IUDs can also cause some of the most severe side effects, including migration of the device and the perforation of organs.

The Guardian’s report noted that a financial supporter of the FEMM app is the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a non-profit whose chairman is Sean Fieler, a wealthy philanthropist and businessman who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and who has previously backed pro-life politicians and causes in the past.

The mission of the Chiaroscuro Foundation is “to renew in our culture a deep awareness of the composite unity of our shared human nature.” According to The Guardian, the foundation donated between $350,000 and $1 million to FEMM each year between 2015-2017, or the majority of its operating budget.

Halpine told The Guardian that FEMM does not comment on abortion, or advocate on political issues.

“FEMM has never commented on the abortion issue. And doesn’t work in that area. FEMM is an organization committed to expanding information research and knowledge about women’s reproductive health around the world,” Halpine told The Guardian.

The Guardian noted that some of FEMM’s medical advisors are based in Chile, and are not licensed to practice in the United States.

“The Reproductive Health Research Institute (RHRI) provides FEMM’s medical assertions, research and training. The two physicians leading RHRI are listed on its website as Pilar Vigil and Patricio Contreras. Vigil is listed as the medical director of RHRI, which has two addresses, one in New York City and another in Santiago, Chile,” the Guardian reported.

“Vigil is listed as an OB-GYN and Contreras as a ‘medical doctor’, but neither is licensed to practice medicine in the United States,” The Guardian noted.

Halpine explained that “FEMM works with medical researchers and providers around the world. Our growing network of health educators and providers in the United States and other countries serves our users worldwide. Our global network is inclusive, and FEMM benefits from the diversity of experience and ideas that our health educators and providers bring to us around the world.“

On its website, FEMM provides health center locators and doctor referrals, and lists licensed health centers and doctors located in the United States.

 

 

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